The One With Everything Blog

Okay, Question Marks. Which would you prefer and why:

a) a return to Kamigawa where R&D is given the freedom to change as much as we need to make a viable set

or

[you can see every deck tech here]

Hello & welcome to this weekly deck tech! This week we’re back at it with EDH with a pretty fun homebrew of mine: Cromat Utility. Now I’ll be honest, this deck isn’t great, but it’s pretty fun and sits at around 20$ so if you’re looking for a funky & unique deck for cheap this might work out! The goal of the deck is to play around the utility & versatility of Cromat & similar cards.

What I mean by that is having a bunch of cards that can do a wide variety of things, so that in any given situation you have an appropriate answer. Cromat is a great example since you can do 5 different things with it, depending on what you need. All of the cards in this deck follow the same strategy for maximum utility & versatility. Let’s get to those cards. Also, before you guys say anything, no the ravnica blocks guildmages are not here; they are mana intensive and they would take most of the deck since there’s 30 of them, you could easily make a deck around them though!

Apprentices

Let’s start off with the cheap ones; all the cards mentionned in this article are part of cycles, which makes things more balanced, and offers even more utility. The first ones are the Apprentice, with Nightscape, Stormscape, Sunscape, Thornscape & Thunderscape. Those cards aren’t usually too impactful, but they offer some nice little effects like granting combat abilities, pinging damage, or tapping creatures. They fit well on the curve too.

Disciples

Honestly very similar to the apprentices, the Disciple cycle adds some more utility to the deck for a cheap cmc, between Ana, Ceta, Dega, Necra & Raka, you have a wide range of combat tricks & mana fixing!

Non-Ravnica Guildmages

Not a lot of people know that Guildmage was sort of a thing before Ravnica, with a little cycle of Armorer, Civic, Granger, Shadow & Shaper. Similar to the apprentices, they offer combat tricks, pinging & bouncing your own creatures. They also fill out your 1cmc slot for the deck nicely, letting you easily play some int he early turn to start the action.

Familiars

Part of the same cycle as the apprentices, the Familiar let you cast spells of specific colours for cheaper; it’s really good in this deck since you’re using every colour equally, the mana reduction is sure to make it worth your while. Again you have the range of Nightscape, Stormscape, Sunscape, Thornscape & Thunderscape for those as well.

Battlemages

There’s actually two different cycles that used the Battlemage template, one being the same as the apprentice & familiar, the other one being on Alara, which gives you even more tools for the deck; between Nightscape, Stormscape, Sunscape, Thornscape & Thunderscape, as well as Ana, Bant, Esper, Grixis, Jund & Naya. The old battlemages all have kicker costs that let you have additional enter-the-battlefield effects to use in different situations; the abilities are also stronger than the ones seen previously and are most likely the most solid cards of the deck, with effects ranging from drawing cards to destroying creatures; the Alara ones are more similar to the apprentices with effects you can activate by tapping them, mostly combat tricks and small things.

Volvers

Very similar to the old battlemages, the Volver cycle has cards with kicker costs that let you have a variety of strong effects depending on the situation, in this case it’s mostly consisting of coming into play with +1/+1 counters and added abilities like trample or regenerate, depending on the kickers that you use. Part of the same cycle as the Disciples, you have the options of Ana, Ceta, Dega, Necra & Raka.

Emissaries

While being a bit less flexible, the Emissary cycle offers some creatures that have a single kicker cost to add an effect when it comes into play, usually it’s destroying an artifact, enchantment, land, creature, etc. They’re not the best cards of the deck, but between Benalish, Shivan, Tolarian, Urborg & Verduran it offers some nice things.

Masters

Sitting at the top of the curve, the Master cycle brings some stronger utility, even if the cost is higher, it’s usually worth it, with effects that kill of creatures, protect them, pumps them, bounces them or drains your opponent; they are kind of your end-game of control/utility in here. They are also part of a previous cycle, with Nightscape, Stormscape, Sunscape, Thornscape & Thunderscape.

Sanctuaries

While not being creatures, the Sanctuary cycle actually brings some nice extra help to the deck with some decent effects. They are part of a previous cycle as well, with the Ana, Ceta, Dega, Necra & Raka. They are harder to deal with than creatures and will let you deal with creatures or draw cards, or even gain life fairly easily.

Mana Fixing

You might as well play the Signet cycle from original Ravnica in the deck since you want mana fixing and the deck wants more 2 drops; I’d recommend playing the 10 different ones to have a good distribution, I’d also recommend running the Panorama & Tri-Lands from Alara to make thing smoother as well.

the Ravnica Option

I don’t personally recommend going the Ravnica Guildmage route since they usually don’t have much synergy between each other (stuff like the Simic ones caring about +1/+1 counters but the deck barely has any) and their activation costs are usually high, but if you want to run them I’d recommend cutting the Sanctuary & Emissary cycles to make some place for them, probably the Familiars and from there it would be up to you. But again, I don’t really recommend doing so.

Wrap-Up

Topi’s Daily Card #1111:  Imperial Seal

Hi there Randy! It’s nice to meet you!

Rather than try and list off all the awesome bloggers who post content for Magic: the Gathering (which is a daunting task because there’s so many) I’m going to let them introduce themselves.